


Beautiful Duality

by Alexander_L



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Doropetra Week (Fire Emblem), F/F, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Friendship/Love, Lesbian Sex, POV Dorothea Arnault, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23383879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexander_L/pseuds/Alexander_L
Summary: In celebration ofDoroPetra Week 2020, I wrote 5 oneshots and originally posted them as separate pieces but I decided to instead compile them here as one work since they tell an overarching story of Dorothea & Petra supporting each other with comfort and love during the war.Some chapters are relatively tame but since there is one with explicit sex and one that is fairly violent too I've kept the rating at E.Day 1: RetreatPetra & Dorothea find comfort in each other's friendship during the stress of the wartime.Day 2: PridePetra & Dorothea fight in a battle and are pushed to their limits.Day 3: AriaWhen words don't feel adequate, Petra & Dorothea turn to music and sex to express love.Day 4: SeaDorothea has always felt lost in the darkness and uncertainty of the world but she finds a guiding light in the joyful time she spends with Petra.Day 5: BraveryIn order to spare their best friend, Dorothea & Petra must do something ruthless during the attack on Enbarr and Dorothea worries she doesn't have the courage.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24
Collections: Doropetra Week 2020





	1. Beautiful Duality

“Dorothea!” Petra cries eagerly as I wander past the doors of the training grounds. “You are having excellent timing! Will you spar with me?”

“I- I was on my way to the greenhouse to harvest some herbs for Hilda.”

“If you help me train, I will help you in the garden! Do you have agree-” She catches herself and corrects the phrase. “Do we have a deal?”

Her enthusiasm is impossible to say no to and I smile. “Deal.”

She takes my arm gently but firmly and pulls me into the training grounds. I’m not sure I have much of a say in it at all. Even if I could resist her charm, I certainly stand no chance against those strong hands.

“I am not very skilled with a sword,” I tell her. “You might be better off training with Felix.”

“Felix is like a cactus and I am not in the mood to be prickled.”

I laugh at the apt metaphor and she grins at me in delight. 

“I love it when you are laughing.” She says the heartfelt words in that unassuming, matter-of-fact way that always stuns me a bit. 

“I am wishing to learn how to fight magic better. Will you fire spells at me?” she asks.

“How do you fight magic with a sword?” I ask.

“The trick is that I will not be getting hit.”

The only other person in the training grounds at the moment is Felix, hacking away at a wooden dummy in the corner.

“Felix, be on guard for spells! Dorothea is using her magic!” Petra shouts at him.

He just gives her a wordless thumbs-up and carries on with his sword exercise.

“Don't worry about hitting him. He is quick on his feet and if he can’t dodge it, he deserves to get hit,’ Petra says.

I give Felix an apologetic look but he doesn’t even acknowledge me.

You know what? I won't shed a tear if I do hit him on accident. Mercedes can always patch him up.

Petra begins to circle me, her body tense and alert as a stalking cat. “Will you start with fire and then we can try lightning?”

“If you wish.”

Pressing my palms together and centering them over my chest, I close my eyes for a moment and focus, feeling the rushing heat of fire magic rising up in my energy. I trace the designs of the spell in my mind, pouring my energy into them, then my eyes snap open and I launch a blast of fire at Petra, praying she dodges it. My heart says to hold back lest I hurt her but I know that not giving it my all would be more of an insult to her than a kindness.

She dives gracefully out of the way, rolling and leaping back up to her feet in a matter of seconds. “Excellent,” she says. “Again!”

With the spell already fresh in my mind, I can throw the fire blasts at her in swift succession. She dodges each spell, although the last one catches her off balance a bit and she stumbles in her attempt to throw herself out of its range before it can burn her.

As she lands hard on the ground, her sword slips from her hand and skitters across the ground. Feeling a stubborn need to beat her suddenly, I lunge forward and snatch up the sword. Petra scrambles to her feet but for once I am just a breath quicker. Whipping the blade up to rest against her neck, I smile at her.

But she doesn’t smile back. Panting for breath and tensed into a crouch, she stares at me intensely. In a flash, she leaps into action, ducking out from under my blade, grabbing my wrist and spinning around to pin my arm behind my back and wrest the sword from me.

“Aha!” she cries.

I sigh. “What a short-lived victory.” 

I expect her to let go but she makes no move to release me. I glance over my shoulder to give her a questioning look and I find her face inches from mine, her eyes wide and startled. A minute ago she looked like a hunter but now she is as frozen and vulnerable as prey.

Pressed tight against her chest, I can feel her heart pounding. 

“Are you going to release me or am I just your prisoner now?” I ask with a small, teasing smile. 

Her eyes go even wider and she lets go of me instantly, stepping back a few steps. “I am thinking we should be going to the garden now. Training has… I would rather be having fun with you than fighting.”

“Me too. It would be good for me to train more but it is hard to find motivation for it when I know how I will have to put it to use on the battlefield.”

Petra gives me a confused look. “It is the best motivation - to survive.”

“Survival always comes at a high cost,” I reply. 

Immediately, I regret throwing a shadow over the bright mood of the moment with such a heavy thought. But I find it almost impossible anymore to let my mind stray from these thoughts for long. Not after Gronder Field. Not after watching my old Black Eagle classmates fall beneath our spells and weapons. Not after seeing the looks of anguish on Sylvain and Felix’s faces as they watched their childhood friend Dimitri die.

Petra defected from the Black Eagles because she feared what would happen to Brigid with Edelgard ruling all of Fódlan. She trusted that if we won this war, Claude would be a far more reasonable ruler to negotiate Brigid’s freedom with. Ferdie came with us because he understood Edelgard was far beyond his council and he had no hope of mitigating her worst impulses anymore. But I did not throw my lot in with Claude for political or moral reasons. I came because I could not bring myself to stand by someone who shed blood so unhesitatingly.

But by doing so, I ended up being forced to shed blood myself - far more than I can ever atone for. 

I break out of my dark thoughts when Petra shakes her head and says, “Sometimes I do not have understanding of you, Dorothea.”

Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t seek out war like Edelgard does, but she doesn’t shy away from it either. Her hands never falter in plunging her blade into someone’s heart.

“We are just very different people, you and I,” I say, forcing a smile back onto my face.

Now is not the time for this. Even a tragic opera needs scenes of happiness otherwise the audience will lose heart. Unless I seize these small moments for joy with my friends, I will lose heart too and not make it to the end of the story.

As I shrug off my melancholy mood, Petra runs over to grab her things from a bench on the edge of the training grounds. As she walks back, she takes a long drink from a flask of water. Then, without a hint of self-consciousness, she pours the water over her sweaty skin and makes a quiet groan of relief that causes my cheeks flush.

I cast a quick, embarrassed look at Felix to make sure he isn’t gawking at her. But who am I kidding? He couldn’t possibly care less. She could stand in front of him fully naked and he would still be too distracted by his training to notice.

“What is wrong? You are- you look worried all of a sudden. Are you not feeling well?”

Oh good Seiros. What have I done that you torment me so? Some goddess you are, punishing me like this.

I tell myself to get a hold of myself and smile calmly at her. “Nothing. Let’s go. Would you like to wear my jacket since your shirt is dirty?” 

I say shirt only for lack of a better term, because her top is little more than a bra. And now that it’s soaking wet… 

“I am quite happy being as I am,” she says.

Fuck you, goddess. Sincerely. Fuck you.

I laugh nervously and say, “Just take it. There is a brisk breeze today. If it cools your wet skin it will make you catch a cold.”

She opens her mouth to protest but I shrug out of my jacket and put it on her before she can get a word in.

Thankfully she gives up arguing and instead admires the jacket, feeling the silk lining and playing with the tassels on the front. It is the one from our academy days that I found recently in the closet of my old room and it makes me smile to see it on her. It is something sweet and innocent to contrast with the fierce, hard nature of her beauty.

In the greenhouse we find Hilda but as she greets us, I give her a look and she nods, understanding the secret code that all women except Petra seem to know. 

“Phew! I’m exhausted. If you two wouldn’t mind taking over for me, I’ll go take a break. Thanks!”

“We will not be having a problem, Hilda!” Petra smiles. “I love working with the dirt and plants.”

Hilda smirks at me and saunters away, leaving us alone in the greenhouse.

“I am wanting to not mess up your lovely jacket,” Petra says, taking it off and folding it neatly. She sets it aside and says, “Shall we be getting to work?”

She draws a dagger from a sheath strapped to her thigh and cuts sprigs of herbs off, wielding the weapon as deftly and easily as if it were a kitchen knife.

We work together in silence for a few minutes then she speaks up. “Something is on your mind, Dorothea. I am not always good at speaking but I am good at knowing when others need to speak.”

“Nothing important,” I answer. “It is just nice to spend some time with you.”

“We used to spend much time together when we were younger. I feel that I have not been seeing you as much since we returned to this place.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve missed…” Honesty feels a little uncomfortable but Petra is one of the few people I struggle to keep up pretenses around. “I’ve missed you terribly. I hope we can be good friends again.”

“Were we ever not being good friends?” she asks in concern.

“Of course not, but we have both changed a lot. I’m not quite as fun and carefree as I used to be.”

“I am glad for it. I think that I am seeing the true Dorothea now. And I like her even more. She is wise and kind. And even when she is sad she is always making me smile.”

Her voice is so sincere and unguarded that, quite embarrassingly, I feel tears stinging in my eyes. Maybe it is just exhaustion or stress. I am not an easy crier. I can fake tears on the stage effortlessly, but real ones are a different matter entirely.

She drops her knife and runs over to me, hugging me and pulling my head down to rest on her shoulder. “I was not meaning to make you cry.”

“It isn’t you,” I whisper. “It’s this world we live in now. Everything is so terrifying, I… I need a friend more than I ever have before. I needed you but I’ve kept my distance. I’m so sorry.”

“Why were you keeping distance?” she asks, stroking my back softly with one hand and resting the other behind my head. She is so tiny, and yet in her strong, tightly-muscled arms I feel safe. So safe that it is easy to forget for a moment that her gentle hands are the same ones that wield a sword so ruthlessly.

But maybe it is that exact duality that makes her so extraordinary. More than anything, I need to believe that this war won’t harden our hearts beyond the point of return. And she gives me faith that no matter what happens, there will still be kind and good people left in this world once the dust settles and the fighting is over.

“I kept my distance because I was afraid that I don’t belong here, afraid that my weakness will only be a liability to you,” I answer.

“You are made for better things than fighting,” she replies. “I am not needing you for your magic, but for your lovingness. You give me reason to fight. I want to end this war so that beautiful and loving people like you can live without sorrow, so that you can sing happier songs. Even now you are filling people’s hearts with joy. I think that is an even more important power to have than being able to kill and win battles.”

I can’t stop the tears that slip down onto her skin and I wrap my arms around her waist, holding her tighter. 

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Do not be giving me any gratitude,” she says. “I too have been keeping distance. I have thought that you…”

“That I what?”

“That when you see me in battle, you hate me. I have killed many people. Many more than I can count now. I try to remember them so I can ask the spirits to give them peace as they return to the earth, but I have lost track of them.”

“I don’t hate you. There will be no world for people like me without people like you to build it. Someday children will grow up in peace and they will owe it to you. I think I lose sight of that sometimes, but it doesn’t make it any less true.”

She lets go of me and smiles, brushing the tears off my cheeks. “Let us make each other a promise.”

“What promise?” I ask.

“You and I will not wait for peace to be happy. We will make our own peace in places like this. We will hide- No, not hide. We will take refuge from the things that make us sad and frighten us for a while so that we can be facing the world with more courage and strength. There is no retreating from this war. I will not back down and I know you will not either. But we can retreat in small ways, for little pieces of time, together. Will you promise this?”

I smile back at her, genuinely this time. “I promise.”

Petra cups my cheek in her hand and stares at me intently. “I too become weary of fighting. I too feel…” She struggles for the right word and her eyes stray to my lips. My breath catches and I become so distracted that I barely hear her as she finishes her thought and whispers, “that loving someone is more important than anything.” Her eyes rise up to meet mine again and she asks, “You used to love me, didn’t you?”

“I think you were the only person here I really loved,” I admit.

“If I can make you smile again will you be loving me again?” she asks earnestly, still not pulling her hand away.

I put my hand over hers and say, “I never stopped.”

“Then there is something I wish to be doing during these retreats of ours, if I have your permission.”

“What is it?”

“I would like to be kissing you. I have spent much time wishing my heart had enough courage to do so long ago.”

I try to think of a reply, but I have never been so lost for words before. Any lines I have for a moment like this have slipped my mind. 

“Do you not want-” she begins but I stir from my surprise and silence her doubts by pulling her even closer and kissing her.

Standing up on her tiptoes, she kisses me back deeply, with a longing and passion that makes my heart pound.

I am used to the rushed, heady kisses of men seeking a good time from me or women looking for novelty and excitement. I am used to being touched like an object, but Petra’s hands don’t grab at my body and her lips aren’t pressuring and hungry. She barely touches me at all except for her hand on my face, her thumb brushing across my cheek. The simple, tender gesture holds an intimacy I have never felt before and I close my eyes and melt into the comfort of her touch.

With precious, stolen moments like this with her, I think I can face any reality, no matter how cruel and overwhelming.


	2. Body & Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Two's prompt is Pride.  
> This vignette deals with the pressure Petra feels because of her responsibility to defend the people of Brigid and with her fear of failure. As she is forced to fight in a battle while exhausted from too much training, Dorothea also must confront her own fears of failure as she tries to protect Petra, even though she normally doesn't fight on the front lines.  
> And in the wake of the battle, they each find some faith in their own strengths.

During our schooldays, I used to find Petra slumped over a pile of textbooks in the library in the middle of the night, having strained her eyes to read in the candlelight until her body gave out with exhaustion. Now that our pressing concern is battle and not education, she spends most of her time in the training grounds. Working hard is nothing new for her, but these days it seems that she will work herself down to the bone. I find her there night and day, every waking hour other than the few precious minutes I can steal her away to rest.

She outlasts even Felix, who is getting better at letting Sylvain drag him away. Whatever is going on between the two of them, it seems Sylvain is presenting some very… well, _compelling_ reasons to distract him from his training.

But no one can get through to Petra. Not even me.

I’ll be damned if I stop trying, though.

Carrying a bottle of iced ginger tea and a basket of food, I head over to the training grounds. It is a beautiful summer evening and I hope that the temptation of vivid sunset will aid my case in convincing Petra to take a break.

When I reach the hall, I find the shutters closed over the windows and the door locked. I knock on the door. “Petra? Darling, are you in there?”

There is no reply.

Setting down the basket, I fish a pin out of my hair and insert it into the lock, holding my breath and listening to the clicks of the mechanism. I smile in satisfaction as it unlocks and falls open into my hand. I can get out of handcuffs with my hands behind my back. It takes a lot more than a simple lock to stop me.

I am a bit worried I will find Sylvain and Felix in a compromising position, for I wouldn’t put it past Sylvain to resort to sex to get Felix to quit training for a bit. It wouldn’t be the first time someone walked past the training grounds and heard suspicious moaning coming from inside.

Good goddess, those boys… Well at least Sylvain has left the female population of Garreg Mach in peace.

But as I step into the room, I am met with silence and shadows. There are no lanterns lit and there is a heaviness to the atmosphere that I feel in my spirit more than my physical senses. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust and when they do I see a small figure sitting in the corner of the room, her knees tucked up to her chest and face hidden against them.

“Who is it?” Petra calls, her voice sharp with panic.

“It’s just me,” I say. I approach her slowly, studying her body language to try to figure out why she looks so shaken. “What happened, love?”

“Go,” she says. “Please, please, go.”

“Why are you in here in the dark?” I ask.

“I am needing to learn to fight at night,” she mumbles. “Please, go away.”

Her dismissal stings but I would obey it if I weren’t so deeply concerned. I am not sure what to do so I set down my basket and sit next to her wordlessly, neither pressuring her to speak nor giving in to her attempts to push me away.

She hugs her arms around her knees tighter and I notice that her shoulders are trembling. I want to hug her and ask her what’s wrong but I don’t want to push her boundaries further. Hoping my presence will draw her out of her shell enough to seek comfort, I stay where I am silently.

After a few minutes, I hear a sniff and a muffled sob. I look at her in alarm. Have I ever seen her cry before? She shed a few tears of joy when we reunited at the monastery with Byleth and the others but I have never seen her unshakeable composure crumble.

“Are you going to stay?” she asks so quietly I barely hear her.

“Yes,” I say.

“I do not want you to be hearing me. Please… will you sing something?”

“What would you like me to sing?”

“Anything.”

“Can I touch you?” I ask.

Another muffled sob then she nods her head faintly. 

I wrap my arms around her waist and lean my head on her shoulder, singing in a husky whisper. It’s a song from Brigid that she taught me and I hope that I am pronouncing the words right. Petra provided me with a rough translation and I memorized the foreign words until I could repeat them even though I don’t speak the language yet.

As I sing, her crying stills and she wipes her eyes. And when I finish the song she lifts her head up from her knees and glances over at me. For a long moment, she stares at me with a strange, emotional look in her eyes I can’t read. Then she slips her hand behind my neck and kisses me deeply - her lips fumbling and tasting of tears as she desperately seeks comfort.

When she finally stops, she leans back against the wall and takes a deep breath. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong? I want to help if I can, my love,” I say.

“I am very selfish and very full of longing,” she says. “That is all.”

“Selfish? How?”

“I want to rest.”

“There is nothing selfish about that. Everyone needs to rest. If you don’t, you’ll hurt yourself.”

She sighs and picks up my hand, holding my palm against her cheek and nestling into it. “You are very kind, Dorothea. But you do not quite have understanding of my position.”

“Then help me understand.”

“As a student, I… I made a promise that I would not be stopping my training and studying until I was ready to be queen of Brigid. But now it is no longer that I _will_ not be stopping. It is that I _cannot_ be stopping. I have no choice anymore. I must be stronger. If I am weak for just one moment, if I do not win a fight, if I die in a battle, it is not just my life I am losing. It is my people’s. They are my responsibility and I must not be letting them down.” She raises her eyes to meet mine again and says, “I am not being stubborn. I want to rest. I long to rest. But I can’t.”

My heart aches at the pain in those beautiful purple eyes and I want to tell her that she is pushing herself too hard and she must take care of herself first. But she is right - I don’t understand. The only responsibility I have is to myself. No one relies on me and I have nothing to lose in this war other than my own life. I cannot imagine the weight of a whole nation resting on my shoulders. I can’t tell her how she should or shouldn’t feel and how she should act.

Taking her hand, I raise it to my lips and kiss her fingers gently. “How can I help?”

“There is nothing you can be doing. My burdens are not yours to worry about. My people are not your people.”

“But you are my people. You are my dearest friend, the woman I love with all my heart. It is my responsibility to help you in any way that I can, not because I have to, but because I choose to.”

She struggles for words for a moment then gives up and kisses me again. I pull her into my lap and she straddles me and puts her arms around my neck. Holding onto her tightly, I wish there was some way I could give her what energy I have. I am helpless to do anything but love her, but hopefully that will make some kind of difference, however small.

Her lips grow hungrier and more passionate and I feel her fingers scrape against the bare skin on my back. A shiver races through me and I gasp, but before I can respond with the same passion and run my hands across her, the sound of yells startles us and she jumps off of me, picking up her sword.

I get up and draw a small fire spell to my hand to light the room as we run to the door. Outside the training hall, the monastery is in a commotion - horns blowing, voices clamoring and armor and weapons clanking.

Ferdie rushes over to us and shouts, “We are under attack!”

“What?” I ask.

“A group of mercenaries sent by the empire. They are outside the walls! Hurry!” he says.

We follow him to the front gates and find Byleth barking orders at the troops while Claude circles overhead on his wyvern, surveying the army marching on us.

Byleth catches sight of us and says, “Petra! You’ll hold the front line with me, Felix and Hilda. Dorothea, you’ll be on the wall with the long-range fighters. Ferdinand! You, Sylvain and Lorenz will lead your battalions with Claude to flank the army and prevent their escape. We can’t have them sending word to Edelgard of our numbers and position.”

I look worriedly at Petra. She is in no state to fight - her body weak with exhaustion and her eyes rimmed by the dark shadows of sleep-deprivation. But even though her hands are trembling slightly, she brandishes her sword with a hard, determined look on her face and says, “Yes, General!”

Before she can go to her place by the gate, I take her arm and pull her back to kiss her. “I love you,” I tell her fiercely. “I will see you soon when this is over.”

“I love you too,” she replies. “Be safe.”

She dashes away and I watch her go with fear pounding in my heart. Felix runs past me and I grab the edge of his cloak, yanking him back to face me.

“What?” he growls.

“Make sure you have Petra’s back. She’s exhausted. I’m worried about her.”

“I always have my friends’ backs!” he snaps. Then with surprising perceptiveness, he reads the emotions in my expression and his manner softens a bit. “I’ll be extra careful.”

“Thank you.”

He nods and I let go of him, taking off towards the stairs leading up to the ramparts where Lysithea is waiting with magic flickering in her palms and Leonie, Ashe and Ignatz are standing beside her, bows drawn and arrows nocked.

I walk over to stand beside Ashe and close my eyes for a moment, focusing the energy of my magic until it is stoked to an inferno inside me and ready to launch into spells.

When I open my eyes, Ashe is staring at me in concern. “What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I answer, taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly as I steel my nerves.

“I ran into Petra earlier. She looked-”

“She will be fine,” I reply with a firm nod, trying to convince myself more than him. “Trust her.”

He wilts a bit with concern and I realize that I spoke harsher than I intended to. As one of her closest friends, he must be nearly as worried about her as I am.

“She’s strong,” he says. “She will persevere.”

“We all will,” I say. I put my hand on his shoulder with an encouraging smile and he smiles back at me, a little bit of hope lighting up his eyes.

The rhythmic stomping of armored boots grows louder and the first ranks of soldiers emerge from the shadows of the forest, their torches glinting off their armor. Dusk is swiftly darkening and soon the field below will be blanketed in darkness. Even with torchlight, it will be difficult to accurately hit our targets. I should use fire magic to provide as much light as I can to the others.

“Hold and take aim!” Byleth shouts from below the walls and the archers raise their bows, focusing on their targets.

Lysithea and I trace the designs of our spells in preparation to fire and I try desperately to settle my racing heartbeat as I wait for the command.

The soldiers draw closer, step by step, rank by rank. There are hundreds of them. Not a full regiment, thank the goddess. But enough that we are evenly matched. It will be a close fight. We have prevailed against much steeper odds, but that was when Claude had time to devise his schemes. This surprise attack has us forced into a reactionary position.

It is a matter of moments, but it feels like a full hour before the soldiers step into range and Byleth yells, “Fire!”

Fire explodes from my palms, rocketing down to tear through the nearest knot of soldiers. The sound of their screams and the shrill, panicked neighs of horses sickens me, but I have grown just desensitized enough that I can focus my magic despite it.

As Lysithea and I rain spells down on the advancing troops, the archers pick them off swiftly one-by-one. By the time the front line reaches our gates, several scores of bodies lie dead on the ground, some licked by fire where their torches dropped to the grass or the flames of my spells caught on their clothes.

We continue to thin their ranks as much as we can until the galloping battalions of our cavalry appear behind the army, having circled around them from the rear gates. As they plunge through the back line of the army, sweeping through the ranks of their mages and archers, the gates of Garreg Mach burst open and I see the glowing scarlet flash of Byleth’s sword slice into the front line as she leads the sword fighters to attack.

I strain my eyes through the shadows to catch sight of Petra, but I can’t see her in the screaming, thrashing chaos below us.

Now that our troops are too integrated into the rest of the army for us to blindly fire spells from above, we run down from the ramparts to follow the sword fighters into the fray. I catch sight of Marianne hovering behind the gates, healing magic glowing in her hands as she patches up the wounded soldiers that limp back to safety.

Normally my place would be at her side. Although I can throw my spells far enough to be useful on the ramparts, I am well aware that I lack the ferocity and lightning-quick reflexes needed for close combat. Byleth has ordered me to fall back as a healer at this point in battles many times before.

“Marianne! Can you hold out on your own?” I shout.

She looks up at me in surprise and nods. “Yes!”

Without quite knowing what I am doing, I charge after Lysithea, catching up to her right before she reaches the fray.

It is not the first time I have fought amidst the terrifying chaos of a battle but it has been a while. I stick close to Lysithea, following her lead. We switch to our lightning spells so as to be able to fight single targets and not catch our allies in the range of our magic.

Lysithea plows forward calmly and purposefully, clearing a path and leaving sizzling, burnt bodies behind her. The soldiers fall back around her, desperately trying to fend her off but she pushes forward, forcing them back. I don’t know how she controls the flow of the battle around her.

It is all I can do to fling spells swiftly and powerfully enough from both hands to stay alive. Dodging out of the way of lances and blades, I am constantly in a state of panicked reaction, fighting off nothing but my instinct to survive. 

A javelin launches past me and I throw myself out of the way just in time for it to merely graze my arm. Terror grips my mind as I realize that if I had been only one second slower, it would have ended up in my chest, ripping into my skin and heart with the kind of damage that not even a healing spell can repair.

“Dorothea!” Lysithea yells. “Fall back!”

“No!” I scream and thrust both hands forward, blasting back two soldiers at once with a roaring thoron blast.

The spell clears space around me, giving me a split-second to breathe, and I leap up onto a pile of bodies to look over the heads of the soldiers for Petra. I don’t see her but I do catch sight of a glow of golden light in the shape of a shield.

Felix. If he is keeping his promise, he will be by her side.

I send a wave of fire in a circle around me to beat back the nearest enemies and jump across their corpses to struggle towards Felix. My feet slip on a pool of blood slicking the grass and I stumble to my knees, but I raise my hands and fire a spell quick enough to stop the nearest man from attacking me.

Jumping up to my feet, I keep fighting, keep pushing, keep weaving past strikes and splitting the darkness around me with pulsing tides of lightning.

Finally I see the glow of the Aegis Shield a few feet away and kill the soldier between us so I can struggle over to his side.

“Petra?” I gasp and Felix nods to his left. I shoot a flare of fire into the air to illuminate the area and see her a stone’s throw away, dancing swiftly through the chaos, her blade glinting in the light of my spell.

“You good?” he asks, nodding at my waist.

I look down and see blood staining my dress. I must have been too caught up in the battle to notice it.

A group of soldiers descend on us and Felix yells, “Heal yourself! I’ll hold them off!”

As he holds ground in front of me, I clamp my hand over the wound and cast a healing spell, clenching my teeth as the skin fuses back together painfully. While I have the healing magic in my hands, I look at Felix and see blood flowing from a deep cut on his left arm. As soon as he fells the last soldier near us, I grab his arm and heal the wound.

“Thanks,” he says. “Come on.”

He dives into the fray towards Petra and I follow along behind him, staggering our enemies with lightning blasts that he follows up quickly with lethal slashes of his blade, almost as swift as my spells.

We reach Petra’s side in a matter of moments and relief floods through me as I study her and see that none of the blood splattered across her clothes is her own. She is too focused on the enemies in front of her to see me and I watch her for a second, looking for signs of the weariness and vulnerability that I saw earlier but finding none.

Her movements are sharp and intense as always, her sword an unstoppable fury of silver, slicing through everything around her. She ducks and dodges, lunges and strikes, leaping over the bodies that fall beneath her blade and throwing herself at the soldiers behind them.

Felix moves to fight beside her and glances over his shoulder at me. “Get behind me!” he yells.

I stick close behind him, protected by the impenetrable wall of the Aegis shield, and fire spells over his head at the ranks of soldiers out of his range. 

As one of my lightning strikes flashes past Petra to kill a man approaching her, she looks around and sees me. I think she shouts something but I can’t hear her over the roar of battle.

Another soldier leaps at her and I cry out for her to watch out, but she whirls around and swings her blade at his neck, cleanly hacking his head off with the ease of an axe chopping firewood. Blood sprays across her as the man’s decapitated corpse collapses. 

The feral screech of a wyvern comes from above us and I look up to see Claude swooping down through the air towards us.

“They’re falling back! Press on! We’ve got them!” he shouts.

Felix growls a curse and throws himself forward at the enemies before they can join their fleeing comrades, cutting a swath through them, Petra at his side. 

As space clears around me, I stagger back. My eyes stray to the headless man and I gag at the revolting sight. For a moment, I double over, clutching my hand over my mouth as I choke on the bile rising in my throat. Then I tear my eyes away from his mutilated body and force myself to lunge forward after Felix and Petra.

I reach them just in time to see a horseman reining his horse around to face Petra. She is locked fiercely in combat with a mage, leaping out of the way of seething clouds of dark magic to strike at him, and I don’t think she sees the horseman.

I watch in horror as he raises a javelin and takes aim. But the second before it can leave his hand, I scream and launch a spell at him. A simple lightning strike wouldn’t have killed him in time to stop him from one last attack, but I pour every shred of magic I have left into a furious thoron blast. The spell kills him instantly and his horse rears and bolts away, throwing his dead body from the saddle.

Petra finishes off the dark mage and looks up to see the remaining soldiers fleeing out of reach. She shouts something and staggers after them, but Felix catches her arm and says, “The cavalry will finish them off! They’re out of our range now!”

When he lets go of her, she sways unsteadily, her sword lowering and her body sagging with exhaustion. I race over to her and catch her in my arms as she collapses. 

“Petra!” I cry, dropping down to my knees on the gore-soaked ground and fearfully examining her for wounds. She is unconscious, but aside from a few cuts that I swiftly heal, she does not seem to be seriously hurt.

“She’s fine,” Felix says, coming over to kneel beside us. “That’s how it is when you push yourself past your limits. Your adrenaline and strength holds out just long enough to see you through the danger, then as soon as it ends, it catches up to you.”

I cradle her in my arms and press a kiss to her sweaty forehead. “Will she be alright?” I ask.

Felix nods. “She’s strong as hell.” He stands up, strapping his shield to his back and sheathing his sword. “Here, let’s get her back to the monastery.”

Between the two of us, we carry her across the battlefield to the gates. As we step carefully through the carnage, I say, “Can I ask you something, Fee?”

“Don’t call me Fee.”

“Sylvain calls you Fee.”

“Yeah, well, he’s fucking me. You’re not.”

“Blunt as always,” I mutter, giving him a withering look.

“What did you want to ask?” he says.

“You used to push yourself too hard too. I’ve seen Sylvain hauling your unconscious body off battlefields before. But I haven’t seen it happen lately.”

“Age makes a person wiser,” he says dryly.

“Oh fuck off. Give me a real answer. Please. I’m worried about her.”

“You want to know what changed?” 

“Yes.”

“I learned to trust that someone would have my back and that it wasn’t up to me to carry the day alone.”

Taken aback by his sincerity, I don’t quite know how to reply.

“You want her to relax?” Felix continues. “Show her she isn’t alone.”

“How do I do that?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“How did Sylvain do that?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Lot of help you are. I guess age hasn’t blessed you with too much wisdom yet.”

“I’m younger than you,” he retorts. “If you’re asking me for advice, that’s your problem, not mine.”

We stop talking for a moment as we skirt around a dead horse, stepping cautiously so as not to slip on the blood-soaked grass. 

“Poor thing,” I murmur, looking back at the beautiful gray mare, a lance protruding from her chest.

“A stab to the heart is a relatively quick death,” Felix says softly and in the pale moonlight I can see my own sorrow mirrored in his expression.

We are both panting for breath from the exertion of the fight and we stop for a moment to rest, setting Petra down gently.

“Listen, Dorothea,” Felix says. “You want wisdom? Ask Byleth. I can’t give you wisdom. But I can give you my opinion.”

“I imagine you would have even had I not asked,” I say.

With a huff of frustration, says, “Shut up. I’m trying to help, alright?”

“I know. I’m sorry. Tell me your opinion and I will listen.”

He takes his glove off and wipes the sweat from his brow, saying, “You’re not a good fighter. You usually end up in the back line with the healers so you don’t have the kind of experience the rest of us do. And you’re too emotional. It causes you to hesitate sometimes and if you hesitate in a battle, you’ll die.”

I know I should fire back at him with something equally cutting, but I can’t think of a witty reply. It’s not like anything he said is untrue. 

“At the moment, you’re weak,” he continues. “But you have the guts. You have the willpower and a decent amount of dumb fucking courage.”

I glance up at him in surprise. That just might be the nicest thing Felix has ever said to me.

“If you fight again the way you fought today, you can stand beside her on the battlefield. You can have her back,” he says. “I’ve got it covered on that front already, of course. Byleth saddled me with the responsibility of making sure all our close-range fighters survive. But trust me when I say that it means more when it’s someone you love fighting next to you.”

“I’ll never be as strong as her.”

“No, you probably won’t,” he says. “But you can still be useful.” 

He picks Petra back up and slings her over his shoulder, continuing his slog towards the gates. Felix might be tough, but he simply doesn’t have the build and muscle capable of carrying a woman, even one Petra’s size, across a battlefield on his own. I take her from him and we carry her together again, although he gives me a slightly resentful frown as if I had insulted him.

Men…

Finally we reach the monastery and some of the knights rush over to take Petra from us and carry her to the infirmary. 

With a furious clatter of hooves, Sylvain gallops over and leaps from his saddle, seizing Felix in a hug. Felix stiffens up angrily, then he relaxes and puts his arms around Sylvain. As Sylvain tips Felix’s chin up and starts wildly kissing him, I leave them and follow the knights to the infirmary.

“Dorothea,” Byleth says, falling into step beside me. “I saw you on the battlefield. I thought you were to stay behind with the healers.”

“I was worried about Petra. I wanted to fight beside her,” I say.

“You did good. We needed more mages out there,” she replies.

“If I trained harder, could I fight on the front lines with her?” I ask.

“We’ll see,” is all Byleth says before being pulled away by someone else to talk.

I make a quick detour to my quarters to clean the dirt and blood from my skin and put on fresh clothes, then I go to the infirmary in search of Petra.

“She’s in her quarters,” Marianne tells me. “I gave her a potion to restore her energy. She isn’t injured.”

“Thank you,” I say. 

Exhausted as I am, I still break into a run as I cross the monastery grounds towards Petra’s room. When I reach it, I stop for a second to catch my breath, then I knock on the door. “Petra? It’s me.”

“Come in,” she says quietly.

I walk in to find her gathering an armful of clean clothes and a towel. “I’m going to have a bath. Will you be joining me?”

“If you like,” I say with a smile.

I rest my arm around her waist as we walk to the bathhouse to help lightly steady her. She might be conscious, but she is still a little faint and her steps are shaky. 

When we duck into one of the private chambers of the bathhouse, she breathes a sigh of relief at the heat of the steam. After rinsing the blood and grime from her skin, she climbs into the bath and moans quietly as the water soothes her aching muscles.

Stripping off my clothes, I join her and as I sit down, she smiles and scoots over to sit beside me and cuddle into my arms.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

“I am feeling tired,” she says matter-of-factly. “But I am no longer feeling such despair. I have been reminded of something that I was losing- that I lost sight of.”

“What’s that?”

“No matter how tired I am, I can rise to the occasion and fight with all of my might. I do not need to be fearing failure.” She looks up at me and says, “And you do not need to be afraid for me. I won’t let you down and let myself be hurt.”

She puts her hand behind my neck and tugs me down for a kiss, but after a moment I pull back and say, “Petra?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to fight beside you on the front lines. I want to be someone you can rely on in a battle. I want to lend you my strength.”

Her brow furrows questioningly. “I thought you… You hate the brutality of being on the front of the lines.”

“I hate the thought of you fighting alone more. I want to be there with you, even if it means being in the midst of all that bloodshed. I can handle it. I’m stronger than I seem. I did it today and I can do it again.”

“But-” she begins, her eyes searching mine. “You are of great use on the back line. Your spells can reach very far. You do not need to be in the front. It isn’t necessary.”

“You are going to be Queen of Brigid someday and I want to be someone you will be proud to have at your side.”

She takes both of my hands in hers and looks at me earnestly. “I would be proud beyond words to have you by my side.”

Her voice is so sweet and tender, it makes me smile faintly and I squeeze her hands.

But her expression darkens and she says, “You don’t believe me.”

“What? No, I-”

“I know you, Dorothea. You can’t fool me.”

I glance down at the soapy water and answer her honestly. “I don’t understand how that could be true.”

Petra is quiet for several long moments and when she speaks, her voice is thick with emotion. “You are the first person in Fódlan who has seen my tears. And you are the _only_ person in Fódlan who will see my tears.”

I look back over at her and she says, “Fight beside me if that is your wish. Your magic will be a strong force with my sword. But do not for one moment be thinking that your ability to kill is what makes me respect you. I respect you because you have done what no one else in Brigid or Fódlan has done. You have made me feel…” She struggles for the right word. “Safe.”

“Safe? I can’t protect you nearly as well as you can protect yourself.”

“I am not needing protection from an enemy. I am needing protection from myself. I saw today that my body is strong. It is my mind and my heart that threaten me sometimes. And if you are here to protect them, I do not need to be pushing my body so hard. I can be trusting that with a strong mind and heart, I will be strong enough as I am.”

Too overcome for words, I kiss her until I am breathless and my heart is pounding. 

“I will fight with everything in me to keep you safe,” I murmur.

She curls up in my lap and rests her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes and exhaling a long, tired sigh. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

I kiss the top of her head and she presses her lips softly against my neck. “I love you with all of my heart.”

“I love you too.”


	3. The Lost Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Three's prompt was Aria - the perfect prompt for beautiful expressions of love. In this one-shot, Petra comforts Dorothea after a nightmare by taking her out to stargaze. Although Dorothea is normally the one who sings for her, this time Petra sings her a song from Brigid. And through music, she finds a way to express everything she struggles to put into words.
> 
> I promised today's oneshot would be smutty (and it is) but in my endeavor to write porn with some feelings, I ended up writing LOTS of feelings with only a little porn. I'm sorry. I got too caught up in the music...

“Dorothea!”

I bolt awake in a cold sweat, staring up into Petra’s wide, concerned eyes and struggling to come back to reality.

“You were shaking like a boat on the waves,” she says. “Were you having a frightening memory?”

“Memory?” I ask, sitting up and hugging the sheets around me. My whole body is shaking and my heart is pounding like a drum. “You mean a dream?”

“Yes. What were you dreaming?”

“I… I can’t remember now,” I say. I rack my brain to try to clarify the vague images and noises in my head, but the nightmare has already slipped away from my consciousness, leaving behind only the skin-prickling dread. 

Forcing a smile, I look over at Petra reassuringly and say, “It’s nothing.”

She settles back down against the pillows with a sleepy smile and holds her arms out for me. I curl up in them and rest my head on her chest, closing my eyes and trying to quiet my mind enough to go back to sleep. But even after my heart starts pounding and any vague sensations of the dream have vanished entirely in my mind, that unsettling feeling persists and I remain too restless to sleep.

Not wanting to keep Petra up, I try to slip out of her arms carefully. But she still notices and opens her eyes. “Are you not wanting to go back to sleep?”

“I think I’m going to just go make a cup of tea. I’ll be back in a bit. You get some rest.”

“We do not need to be waking up early. Let me stay up with you,” she says, getting out of bed. She stretches lithely and shakes her head a bit to clear the bleariness away. Her hair, free of its braids, is a purple lion's mane around her and she tries to comb her fingers through it but it does nothing to subdue the wild curls.

She laughs and swears. “I am a frightening sight at night. Maybe I will scare off the spirits troubling your dreams.”

“You’re beautiful,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her waist and kissing her.

As I get dressed, Petra strays over to the window and pulls aside the curtain to look out. “Is your heart set on tea?” she asks.

“No. Why?”

“I think there are better things for calming,” she says and unlatches the window. Pushing aside the glass panel, she hops gracefully onto the sill and climbs out on the awning.

“What are you doing?” I ask in alarm, rushing over to the window.

She perches on the narrow ledge without a hint of concern and grins at me. “Follow me.”

Before I can protest, she jumps up and catches hold of the ledge above us pulling herself up onto it. I lean out the window and look up to see her standing atop the roof.

“Are you needing help?” she asks.

Her challenging tone provokes an instinctual stubbornness in me and I climb out onto the ledge. “No.”

Come on, Dorothea. You used to run amok all over the streets as a child. You grew up scaling trees and walls and roofs to escape cops. Have you lost your nerve?

Definitely not.

With a determined frown, I jump and catch the edge of the roof, my fingers latching onto it desperately. Petra grabs my arm to help, but I manage to swing up mostly on my own.

The roof of the dormitories is slanted and I scramble up it after Petra, forcing myself not to look down at the twenty or thirty foot drop to the ground. When we reach the top, it flattens out and we can rest without worrying about slipping.

Petra takes off her cloak and spreads it on the smooth stone, lying down and crossing her arms under her head. I sit down next to her and ask, “Why are we roosting up here like a couple of pigeons?”

She points up at the night sky and I follow her gaze, feeling a flutter in my heart at the mesmerizing sight. It is a clear, moonless night and I swear I can see every single star, as well as the shimmering ribbons of the galaxy threading through them.

“We could stargaze on the ground,” I whisper, glancing over at her with a teasing smile. 

“But then we would be tied to the ground. If you want to be feeling like you are part of the sky, you need to be atop a tree,” she replies. “I chose a roof, though, because in a tree I cannot be doing this.” She pulls me into her arms and kisses me deeply.

I get so lost in the warmth of her lips and the sensation of her hands running across my body that I forget all about our precarious position and my anxiety slips away. Rolling on top of her, I prop myself up on my elbows above her and kiss her back with abandon.

She pulls back for a moment and laughs softly. “Don’t worry. I will hold onto you,” she says, wrapping her legs around my waist. “You will not be falling.”

I come back to reality with a sudden jerk of panic and collapse onto my back beside her, feeling dizzy as I peek over at the edge a foot away where the roof slopes down to the ledge. 

“You’re going to be the death of me,” I murmur, my chest heaving with anxious breaths.

Taking my hand and intertwining her fingers with mine, she says, “Keep your attention on the stars. I will wait to kiss you again until you are used to the height.”

I force myself to relax a bit and return to stargazing. Petra points out constellations I’ve never heard of before and tells me the legends behind them and the more she talks, the more I feel at ease until finally I have stopped casting fearful looks at the edge of the roof and feeling like my whole body is on pins and needles.

“Do you know any songs for a night like this?” she asks.

“None that would do it any justice.”

“I have knowledge of one, but I am not sure I am able to translate the verses for you. I can tell you its story, though.”

“Why don’t you sing it for me and I will see if I can guess what it is about?” I ask.

“Would that be making you happy?”

“Your singing always makes me happy,” I say, glancing over at her with a smile.

She smiles back and says, “Then I will do my best.”

Her voice starts off a bit shaky but after a few lines, her confidence grows and she sings with a beautiful, bright alto tone that would have enchanted even the most fastidious of theater-goers in Enbarr.

I listen, completely enraptured, envisioning the notes in my mind, following their dance across the pages as they swell and rise, slow and fall. A minor, C major, D major, E minor, A minor… It’s a beautiful flow of emotions - narrative in the way of an opera, but with the self-expression of an aria. Sometimes she speaks more than sings the words, and other times her voice glides along the melody, drawing out a single syllable into a spiral of notes.

When she finishes the song several minutes later, it takes me a bit to stir from my spell-bound state and return to reality. 

“That was… that was exquisite,” I whisper.

“Do you know what the story it is telling is about?” she asks.

“It’s about a journey, isn’t it? It starts with anticipation, wondering what’s ahead of you. Then the journeyer finds pain and struggles to fight through it. But then they have hope and they find happiness. The pain is still there, though. I could hear it in the minor key shifts. But the hope was stronger.”

She looks at me in astonishment. “The story is about a spirit of the sky who is taken captive on earth. She escapes but she becomes lost in a terrible forest. She wanders many years until one day she meets a lost spirit of the water. Together, they find their way out and come to the ocean where they both once lived. And there they live together for the rest of time. You did not have understanding of the words but you heard the story in the music even without them.”

“What a beautiful story.”

“I sang it for you because in Brigid it is considered a love song. The story is a…” She scrunches her nose as she searches for the right word. “It’s not a story.”

“It’s a metaphor,” I say.

“Yes! A metaphor. Their love for each other is what helps guide the lost spirits from the forest. It brings them home. It is a story about a journey, but it is a song about love.”

I stare back at her for a long moment, feeling overwhelmed. I try to speak but the words choke in my throat and I know there is no point in trying to put this feeling into words anyways. Slipping my hand behind her neck, I kiss her until I know she understands what I couldn’t say.

When we stop to catch our breath, Petra jumps to her feet and says, “Let’s go back inside.”

“Why?” I ask. “It’s lovely up here.”

But she doesn’t answer. Sliding down the slope to the edge of the roof, she grabs the ledge and swings effortlessly down and back onto the window sill.

“Petra!” I cry, hesitating on the edge. Climbing up was hard enough. Climbing down…

Oh goddess help me.

She pops her head up and says, “Are you needing helping?”

“I…”

Fuck this. Marianne can put me back together if I fall off and break my bones.

Copying Petra’s graceful, decisive movements as best I can, I climb down and swing back onto the window ledge, jumping back into our room and dropping gratefully to my knees on the floor.

“My brave, Dorothea,” Petra says, lifting me up to my feet.

“Why did we suddenly need to rush back in here?” I ask. “I would have liked more time to prepare my nerves for the possibility of death.”

“Because there is something very important I must be doing right now,” she says, her fingers closing around my arms tightly. With a startlingly intense look in her eyes, she steps closer, pushing my back up against the wall. Then she kisses me so passionately I feel dizzy and I have to throw my arms around her neck to steady myself.

Before I know it, I am unbuttoning her shirt and yanking it up over her head and she is unhooking the clasps on my bra. We stumble over to the bed, leaving a trail of clothes behind us and this time I take control, taking her hips and gently pushing her onto her back.

As I kiss her neck and run my hands longingly across her body, she says breathlessly, “I- I felt very much suddenly that I wanted you. You-” She stops to gasp as I slide my hand across her soft thighs and rest it between her legs, feeling the heat of desire growing in her body. “You-” she continues. “You do not need words to be understanding me. And I-” Again her breath catches as my lips move from her neck to her breasts. “I love you because of it.”

I stop for a second to say, “I love you too. Words don’t matter when we have music and we have sex.”

She brushes my hair out of my face and smiles down at me. Maintaining eye contact with her, I watch her expression with satisfaction as I swirl and flick my tongue across her nipples and her body shifts impatiently under me. She arches her back slightly and I switch from teasing to sucking, drawing a moan from her.

As I move my mouth to her other breast and massage her thigh with my hand, she says, “I want to be pleasing you too. Lie down and let me go first.”

“Absolutely not,” I say, smiling up at her. “I am not letting you go until I’ve finished saying how much I love you.”

She opens her mouth to argue but is interrupted by a gasp and a groan as I slip a finger inside her and gently feel to see if she is ready. She isn’t quite wet enough for sex yet, although I can feel her arousal building, so I focus on lavishing more attention on her nipples until her breath is racing and her fingers are gripping my hair tightly.

She swears and says, “You can… you can do anything that you wish to do to me.”

“I want to make you come over and over and _over_ again. Can I do that?” I ask.

A wordless whimper of anticipation is her only reply and I glance up to see her eyes closed tight and her lips parted.

I kiss my way down her body, exploring every inch of her stomach and hips and thighs until she is practically trembling with impatience. This time when I brush my fingers softly across her clitoris, I can feel that she is ready. I move my hand down and slip my finger inside her, adding a second one once I’m sure she isn’t too tight. 

She groans and bucks her hips down against my hand, begging me to go harder, and I speed up my rhythm a bit, making sure the angle is right so my fingers are brushing across the perfect spot. A stifled cry escapes her lips and she grabs fistfulls of the sheets, clenching them so tightly her knuckles pale.

“Harder. Please… Dorothea, will you-” The rest of her plea is lost in a cry as I obey and fuck her with nothing held back.

Her first orgasm is a rushed, heady, desperate one - passion and excitement lending impatience to her body. Right as she comes down from it and starts to sit up, I grab her hips and tug her closer.

“I’m not done yet,” I say.

She looks at me with wide eyes and I lie down, smiling up at her for a second before leaning in and burying my face between her legs, nuzzling her hot, slick skin until my tongue finds her clitoris and she cries out.

She reaches down and brushes my hair out of my face, tangling her fingers in it and holding it back behind my head so she can see me as I go down on her. 

“I love watching you,” she whispers. “You are so beautiful. So-” She gasps then says, “perfect.”

Her eyes hold a stunned, captivated look as she admires me and I get lost in them for a moment, watching in delight as her mouth opens with a low moan and she clutches my hair tighter.

Then her head falls back and she swears. I close my eyes and focus more intently on pleasing her. I have to grab her hips to hold them still as she moves them unconsciously, her body shuddering and bucking with every wave of sensation.

I don’t understand the words she is gasping but I’ve heard them often enough during sex to know she is swearing. Determined to draw it out this time, I calm down a bit and move my tongue in slow circles, enjoying the way it strips away the last of her composure and she groans. “No, no, please… Please!”

I continue to tease her until I know she is reaching her limit and can’t stand it anymore. Then I fuck her harder, kissing and sucking with every ounce of passion I have, reveling in the incredible noises she makes and the deep, overwhelming _need_ I can feel in her body.

She comes harder this time, her legs clenching and her toes curling as whines and cries come loudly from her lips without a hint of self-consciousness or a thought of whether anyone might hear us or not.

When she is done, she melts down against the sheets, her thighs quivering and a euphoric expression on her face. I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand and lick my lips, then sit up and study her, wondering if I pleased her as much as I hoped to. She deserves all of heaven and earth and I have promised myself that I will practice and study and learn every detail of her body and desires until I have given her all the love that it is possible to give.

Stirring from her daze, she sits up and cups my cheek in her hand, kissing me tenderly, her tongue playing gently with mine. She leans in and deepens the kiss for a minute then pulls back to rest her forehead against mine, panting for breath.

“Now can it be my turn?” she asks. “I have so much love for you. More than I know how to say.”

“I’ll allow it,” I say teasingly. “But I’m nowhere near done with you.”

She grabs my shoulders and pushes me down onto my back, climbing on top to straddle me. “You might not be having time. It will be dawn before I am done fucking you.”

I raise my eyebrows. Normally she says sweet, poetic words like _‘make love.’_

“Yes,” she says. “Tonight I will be fucking you. As hard and perfect as you do me.”

“You’re always perfect,” I say.

“Tonight my heart is so full I think I can be even more perfect.”

The confidence in her bright smile is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen and I pull her down for another kiss, my lips betraying my eagerness to find out exactly what she means.

We both keep our promises and it is nearly dawn before we collapse onto the pillows and tug the sheets up around our exhausted, sweaty bodies, promising to settle down for good finally and get a couple hours of rest.

“Will you be sleeping with peace now?” she asks, nestling into her pillow.

“Yes,” I say, brushing a stray curl out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.

“Good,” she mumbles sleepily. “But if you don’t, promise me you will wake me so I can sing my song for you again. I am hoping it will be a charm to ward away your nightmares.”

“I would be the happiest woman in the world if you sang that song for me every day.”

She nods, closing her eyes. “Then that is what I will be doing.”

“Goodnight,” I whisper.

“Goodnight, my beloved.”


	4. Rhapsody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day Four's prompt is the Sea.  
> For this day, I did something different. Instead of battles or angst or sex or endless pages of dialogue which are my norm, I wanted to write something a bit more introspective. If you need to enjoy a moment of happiness amidst everything going on this crazy world (as Dorothea & Petra need to) then this is for you - a brief oneshot of Dorothea & Petra enjoying a blissful, euphoric afternoon in the ocean.

For as long as I can remember, a shadow has been growing over my spirit, bearing down darker and deeper with each passing year. The more I see of the world, the more I am terrified by it. The more people I meet, the less I love. 

This war has taken that shadow and streaked it crimson with blood until it became a cloud - dark and damp like the air before a storm, creeping into my lungs and resting with aching heaviness in my chest.

I stumble through the darkness, finding my way by chasing after moments of happiness that mark a trail like lamp posts. My whole life, I’ve sought not just to find those bright moments for myself, but also to create them for others, through my music, through my love and acts of service and kindness. 

But the distance I have to walk between lamp posts has stretched over these past few years until sometimes I can’t see any light either behind or before me. So I search like the sky spirit in Petra’s aria - lost, but unable to stop wandering on the hope that someday she’ll find the edge of the forest.

Then I met her and the metaphor of the aria became as real as the blood in my veins.

For here we are - she and I - free of forests and castles and battlefields. We’re home. Neither of us have ever set foot on this beach before, nor will we likely again. But as we wander along the shore of the ocean in Derdriu the sense of homecoming is so powerful it takes my breath away.

I know Petra feels it too, for she cannot tear her eyes away from the glittering waves and there is an intensely conflicted look on her face as if she is experiencing both joy and pain at the same time. We are on the opposite side of the continent from Brigid, but the ocean itself is a home to her spirit.

Taking her hand and intertwining my fingers with hers, I hum the tune of the aria as we walk. And as I reach the last line, Petra joins in to sing the words quietly.

“The home of sky and water,” she whispers. “I have been missing them more than I realized.”

“I feel like I have too, even though I’ve never lived by the sea before. It just feels… right.”

“Someday when I go home to Brigid, I will be taking you with me. I am glad that it will feel like home for you too.” She glances at me and some of the pain eases in her expression as a smile lights up her eyes. “You look beautiful here, my love.”

We round the corner of a rocky ledge into a sheltered cove and she stops walking, stripping off her clothes. “Come on!” she says, running towards the water.

“Petra!” I gasp. “What if someone sees us?”

“So what if they do?” she replies, bounding past the lapping surf on the shore and springing into the waves with an eager dive. She surfaces a moment later and tumbles along with the waves back to the shore.

“Please, Dorothea! Join me!”

Casting one last look over my shoulder to make sure no one is nearby, I take off my clothes and fold them in a neat pile. I can’t deny the intoxicating freedom of the sand under my bare feet and the contrasting sensations of stinging wind and hot sunlight on my naked body.

I dive in after her with a delighted scream, reveling in the shock of the cool water enveloping my body and the pull of the currents swirling around me.

Petra swims over and grabs my hand, leading me out into the deeper water until my toes can’t touch the ground anymore.

It is a little intimidating to be exposed under the boundless sky and at the mercy of the ocean, but I am a strong swimmer and with Petra at my side, I find that I don’t fear the depth at all.

The ocean is gentle today, the waves little more than lapping current, not the assaulting, white-capped walls they were last night when we arrived in Derdriu during a rainstorm.

Our words are carried away by the wind and we give up talking altogether, surrendering our attention to the ocean’s magic, each element of it weaving together into a spell.

The blinding, sparkling light held captive in the water.

The way it reflects in Petra’s eyes.

The cries of the gulls punctuating the rhythm of waves. 

The smell of salt and the way it clings to my skin.

The shivers thrilling through me when Petra’s hands touch my naked body.

Her laughter and shouts of joy: the only sound I can hear over the noise of the sea.

After a while, each of the dazzling sensations spiral into a single glowing feeling of contentment, swelling and dancing around me with the harmonic intricacy of a symphony.

The shadow will return to hang over me. It is as permanent a fixture in the nature of the world as it is in my own nature. But I know that a day as euphoric as this will hold it at bay for many weeks to come. And maybe someday when we live in Brigid and the sea will always be in our reach… maybe then the light will be the pure state of things and the moments of shadow will be the exception.


	5. The Blood of a Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm.... I'm so sorry, guys. I don't know why I do this to myself. I cried while writing this but I couldn't not write it. 
> 
> In today's DoroPetra Week oneshot, I wanted to write about some darker stuff. The prompt is bravery and in the context of war, I think one of the bravest things the Fire Emblem characters have to face is fighting their old friends and classmates. But the brutality necessary for these battles is something Dorothea has always struggled with. When she and Petra decide that they must do something ruthless during the attack on Enbarr in order to spare their best friend, Dorothea is forced to find out how brave she can be in the face of one of her worst fears.

With a roar the flaming timbers of the gates crash open, sending embers and shards of wood flying. I blast them away from us with a wind spell and Petra and I push through the fire with the vanguard into the palace courtyard.

It’s been so long since I’ve been in Enbarr I almost don’t recognize it. And I’ve only been to the palace once when the Mittelfrank Opera Company performed for the old emperor. I never imagined the next time I set foot in this courtyard it would be with magic blazing in my hands and the yells of battle around me.

The onslaught of Edelgard’s soldiers is instant and overwhelming. If I hadn’t spent the past few battles fighting by Petra’s side and training myself to handle the chaos, I’m sure I wouldn’t survive more than a minute.

As she dances around me, her sword a lethal flash of silver splashed crimson with blood, I struggle to fight back the soldiers bearing down ahead of us, throwing spells as swiftly and powerfully as I can.

Fire to clear a wave ahead of us. Lightning to strike down a soldier diving at Petra from behind. Wind to sweep back the arrows raining from the sky.

Step by step we press on, through the sea of bodies and screams and fire, and the doors of the palace grow closer.

  
  


_The morning before we marched on Enbarr a clouded dawn had kept our camp soaked in the half-frozen dew that the hidden sunlight couldn’t burn away. We didn’t dare light campfires lest we betray our numbers, so Petra and Ferdinand huddled close around me as I heated cups of tea with a small fire spell held in my palms._

_“Thank you,” both of them murmured as I handed them their steaming brews._

_Footsteps crunched on the frosty ground and we glanced up to see Byleth walking over. She sat down next to us and Petra asked, “How are the preparations going? Will we be marching soon?”_

_“Yes. We’re nearly ready,” Byleth said._

_None of us seemed to know how to reply so we all fell silent, staring out into the darkness._

_“I’d like to order you three to stay behind,” Byleth said abruptly. “But I want you to have a choice.”_

  
  


The dying cry of a pegasus catches my attention and I look up to see its body plummeting down towards us. 

“Watch out!” I yell and we scramble out of the way just in time to not be crushed beneath it as it hits the cobblestones with a horrible sound. Blood pools around it - some from the arrows embedded in the creature’s flesh and some from its rider, her skull shattered and her body pinned beneath the pegasus’s twisted wings. I force myself to tear my eyes away from her and keep my focus on the battle around us.

A lance thrusts towards me and I dodge out of the way, striking its wielder with a thoron spell before he can swing again. One more spell and he is dead, falling to the ground to join the corpses piling up under our feet.

I jump over him and press forward. Step by step, body by body, spell by spell. We’re getting closer. Only a furlong left. Seiros please… let this be over soon. Please. We’re so close.

  
  


_“You didn’t send Sylvain and Felix to the back lines when Dimitri’s army attacked us at Gronder,” I said. “Why would you send us away?”_

_“That was a sudden attack. We weren’t planning on it,” Byleth answered. “This time it is premeditated and there’s no need to force the three of you to attack your home.”_

_“Enbarr is not my home,” Petra replied. “Enbarr was my cage.”_

_“It’s my home,” I said quietly. “I’d be lying if I said the thought of invading it didn’t make me sick. But I also haven’t come this far to stop now. We have already killed some of our old classmates and friends. It’s too late to go back and undo that. We should see this through.”_

_Ferdinand glanced at me in surprise then nodded firmly. “It would be wrong of us to let you march into danger alone. A true noble never abandons his comrades," he told Byleth. "Dorothea is right. It is too late to turn back now.”_

_“You will be having my loyalty today the same as you always have,” Petra agreed._

_Byleth stared at Ferdinand calmly and said, “Sometimes it is better to do what is kindest than what is most noble. Claude and I have no doubt as to your bravery and strength. But we have no wish to cause you more pain than we already have. We won’t leave you sitting idle either. Your mission would be to skirt around the city and prevent escape from the back gates.”_

_“We will fight with you,” Ferdinand replied. “I appreciate your kindness, Professor. But I feel strongly on this matter.”_

_She nodded. “Very well.”_

_As she walked away to attend to the organization of our troops, the three of us glanced at each other and I saw my own sorrow reflected in both of their faces._

_“Let’s stick together on the battlefield today,” I said. “I know that normally you would be with the cavalry, Ferdie, but horses won’t be of as much importance once we breach the walls of the palace. You could fight on foot with Petra and I.”_

_“Please, Ferdinand. It would be giving much strength to my heart for you to fight beside us,” Petra added._

_Although his expression was tight with pain, he smiled and the steadfast hope that rose up in his eyes reassured me. He held out his hands and Petra and I each took one. Squeezing them tightly, he said, “That is an excellent idea. We can overcome any foe if we fight together.”_

  
  


With the aid of Claude and Hilda flying overhead on their wyverns, Ferdinand, Petra and I finish off the demonic beast rampaging around us. As its body collapses, we are given a fleeting moment of peace, for it cleared away the nearest soldiers. Claude and Hilda fly off to help on the other side of the battlefield and Ferdinand, Petra and I look at each other.

“My arm,” he says, holding it out. I run over and heal the deep gash torn in it by the monster’s razor-sharp teeth.

“Petra?” I ask.

She gestures to her waist, too out of breath to speak. Casting another healing spell, I seal up the wound and she nods gratefully.

“Let’s keep going,” Ferdinand says. He gives us both an encouraging nod. “We are nearly there. Let us not lose heart.”

I smile at him, his courage strengthening my own. He pats Petra and I each on the back then turns back towards the fight, taking off in a run at the nearest rank of soldiers, killer lance raised and ready to strike.

With a fierce yell, Petra takes off after him and I catch up to her, summoning magic to my hands. The doors are within sight now and Byleth, Felix and several of the others are already launching their assault on the guards.

But before we can reach them, the sky around us goes suddenly dark, shadows swirling in a seething cloud of magic. Ferdinand and Petra both skid to a stop and fall back a few steps warily. I throw a fire spell out to clear away the cloud of magic, but it pushes back against me ruthlessly. Planting my feet firmly on the ground, I lean into the spell, arms thrust out, flames streaming in a furious tide from my palms. 

The shadows start to give way, then suddenly the spell breaks. But there is no sign of who cast it. The nearest soldiers all lay dead on the ground, a wide swath of space cleared around us, trapping us in an eerie circle of stillness amidst the chaos.

  
  


_Petra moved closer to me after Ferdinand walked away and said, “I’m worried about him.”_

_“Me too. He’s very brave but he has a soft heart.”_

_“So do you and yet it is never making you any less strong,” she said. “It is not his soft heart I am worried about. Even though it gave him pain to fight against the empire in all of our battles, he was always rising to the challenge. But this one will be different.”_

_“Because it’s against Edelgard?”_

_“No. I don’t think any of us will have regret for killing her. Sorrow, but not regret, not after what she has done,” Petra answered. “But this time we will have to be fighting Hubert.”_

  
  


Out of the corner of my eye I see the flicker of a teleport spell, then suddenly he appears beside us, a Levin sword spitting sparks in one hand and an orb of dark magic held in the other. He attacks Petra first, targeting the strongest of us first, as calmly and analytically as if they were sparring in the training grounds.

I glance quickly at Ferdinand and see a look of anguish etched across his face. “Hubert!” he cries breathlessly.

Hubert looks up at him for one instant then doubles down the fury of his attacks on Petra. I try to fire a lightning spell at him, but he deflects it easily with the Levin sword. I can’t hit him with fire without catching Petra in the blast so I skirt around them, searching desperately for an angle where I can catch him off guard without hitting her.

Every spell I cast, he counters and every strike of Petra’s sword, he evades, teleporting a few inches away and forcing her back as she dodges a spell.

Ferdinand stumbles a step closer, lowering his lance. “Hubert, stop. Stop! We don’t need to fight each other!”

Finally a gap opens up between Hubert and Petra and I shoot a thoron spell straight at him. But he vanishes at the last split-second and when he reappears it is directly behind Petra. Before she can turn to attack, he throws a savage wind spell at her that sends her flying back. As she crashes into a pile of rubble, the broken timbers shift, crashing into her legs. I hear the snap of a bone and she howls in pain, hunching over her broken leg that is pinned beneath the wreckage.

“Petra!” I run towards her but Hubert cuts me off, forcing me away from her with a barrage of spells.

An agonized yell comes from behind me and I hear Ferdinand’s running footsteps charging at us.

“No! Get back!” I shout at him. “Get Byleth!”

He races past me, swinging his lance at Hubert and I stagger out of the way.

“Ferdie!” I scream. “No!”

“Run!” he says. “Get Petra out of here!”

  
  


_I pulled Petra into my lap and wrapped my arms around her tightly, hiding my face against her neck so she couldn’t see the tears welling up in them. There was little closeness between Hubert and Petra, but he and I were friends and he and Ferdie were far more._

_“If my heart had been hardened like Hubert’s so that I stood against you on a battlefield, would you be able to kill me?” Petra asked._

_“Of course not,” I murmured._

_“I don’t believe Ferdinand will be able to either. But I also do not think Hubert will be showing him mercy.”_

_“They loved each other once. Maybe…” I trailed off, aware of the futility of the thought._

_Hubert was too far gone. He had been taught since birth to follow Edelgard with unquestioning loyalty. It went against everything he knew to even allow Ferdinand to get as close as he did during our school days. I had hoped - we all had hoped - that his love for Ferdie would be enough to free him from his slave-like devotion to Edelgard. But in the end, that lifetime of indoctrination won out and Ferdinand's desperate pleas to get Hubert to join us had fallen on deaf ears._

_If Hubert didn’t break away then, he wouldn’t now. In these past five years, the love Ferdie taught him and the friendship he found with me were likely beaten out of him by the cruelty of war._

_“We must make sure we keep Ferdinand away from Hubert,” Petra said. “And if we can’t do that, then I will be killing Hubert. I will make his death swift and merciful so that Ferdinand does not have to be watching him suffer.”_

_“Hopefully Felix or Claude or Byleth encounter him on the battlefield, not us. Or hopefully he flees. But you’re right - we have to be ready. He could specifically target Ferdie. There might be nothing we can do to escape him. If the worst should happen and we have to face him, I promise I will help you so you don’t have to bear that burden alone.”_

  
  


I raced towards Petra, drawing healing magic to my hands. If I can get her on her feet, we can take out Hubert together. There’s no way I can on my own. He’s too strong.

I almost make it to her when a blast of magic hits me in the back, throwing me to the ground and knocking the air from my lungs. Pain stabs through my chest as one of my ribs crack and I choke, trying desperately to gasp air back into my lungs. 

Digging my hands into the ground, I try to push myself up but the second I put weight on my right ankle, I tumble back to my knees with a shock of pain and realize that it is broken.

“Hubert, please,” Ferdinand begs. “Just talk to me!”

I scramble around to watch them fight, panic making my heart pound. Ferdinand is barely holding ground against Hubert’s attacks and he is already bleeding from multiple wounds. He doesn’t stand a chance, does he?

Oh goddess… Please! Don’t let Ferdie die. Not like this. Not by the hand of the man he loves. That is cruel, even for you!

Back and forth they trade attacks until Ferdinand's movements are slowing and I know his strength is waning.

Get up, Dorothea! You have to do something!

I struggle to my feet, limping on my broken ankle towards Petra but I only make it a few feet before Hubert tosses a wind spell over his shoulder and it slams me back down to the ground.

The Levin sword slices through the air towards Ferdinand and he is just a moment too slow this time. In one deft movement, Hubert disarms him and Ferdinand's lance clatters to the ground, immediately flung aside by a spell from Hubert.

Clamping a hand over the blood staining his waist, Ferdinand stands in front of Hubert, gasping for breath. He doesn’t turn and run. He doesn’t try to keep fighting. He just stares at him, his big golden eyes full of a pain I can’t even fathom.

“I love you,” he says. “I have always loved you. I never stopped loving you! Please, before you kill me, just talk to me for a moment. I have missed you so much.”

Hubert keeps the hand with magic outstretched, but he lowers the Levin sword.

“Running into you like this, it’s almost sentimental,” Hubert says in a low, strained voice. “I didn’t expect to. I didn’t think you would have the guts to march in here with the rest of the rebels and seal the last nail in your own coffin.”

“I could have stayed behind. Byleth wanted me to. But I had to come. I thought maybe-”

“Maybe you could negotiate with Lady Edelgard? You fool.”

“No,” Ferdinand says, hanging his head with a look of grief. “I know she would never listen to me.”

“So you thought you could sway me?” He laughs bitterly. “And here I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I am not a fool, Hubert. I thought you knew _me_ better than that.”

“Then why are you here? What could you possibly hope to gain by coming here other than pain?”

Ferdinand looks back up at Hubert. He tries to speak, but his voice catches. He coughs and clutches tighter at the wound on his waist. “I just wanted to see you again, to make sure you were alive. I thought maybe I could protect you if we won the battle, help you escape so you would not be executed.”

For the first time, Hubert’s cold, expressionless mask slips and a bit of hope leaps to life in my heart. I look at Petra and she stares back at me, shaking her head. She points to a spot on the ground a few feet away from me and when I glance over I see her sword.

“ _Kill him_ ,” she mouths silently, gesturing at Hubert.

Slowly, I drag myself towards the weapon and Hubert is too distracted by Ferdinand to notice.

“If Lady Edelgard dies today, then I will die with her,” he says. He steps closer to Ferdinand and drops the Levin sword. His voice is harsh and full of restrained emotion as he growls, “Go.”

“I can’t-”

“Go!” he yells. 

Ferdinand stands up straighter and looks back at him fiercely. “I am not going to leave here without you.”

I want to scream at him to take his chance and run, but I know it won’t do any good. Inch by inch, I keep moving, carefully and quietly, until Petra’s sword is within reach. I don’t know how to use it well, but I know enough. My fingers close around the hilt and I look back at Ferdinand and Hubert fearfully.

“Are you going to kill me?” Ferdinand asks, taking a step closer. There is only a foot between them now and it terrifies me. Hubert could snap his fingers and kill Ferdinand instantly at that range.

When Hubert doesn’t reply, Ferdinand grows bolder. He reaches out and touches Hubert’s face, his fingers just barely brushing his cheek. I watch in amazement as Hubert freezes, but doesn’t pull away or lash out. 

“I am probably going to die here anyways,” Ferdinand says. “Your spells have done their job. If for nothing else than old time’s sake, just let me-” He leans in and presses his lips against Hubert’s. 

Hubert does not withdraw the magic in his hand, nor does he touch Ferdinand in any way, but he tips his head down and kisses him back. I know him well enough to see the longing and conflict in the way his body stiffens angrily but his head tilts to deepen the kiss at the same time. 

Gripping the sword hilt tightly, I wait, holding my breath. What is Hubert doing? Is there really any hope he might give in?

A joyful sort of noise somewhere between a gasp and a cry comes from Ferdinand, muffled by Hubert’s lips, and he dares to throw his arms around Hubert’s neck, pressing his body closer. For one moment more, they kiss then a crash booms across the battlefield and Hubert yanks his head back to look towards the palace.

The doors have been breached.

“Hu-” Ferdinand begins to say but is interrupted as Hubert stumbles back out of his arms with a ragged gasp.

“You’re distracting me,” he says breathlessly. “I-”

“Hubert, listen to me, my love. It is not too late to-”

“It is too late,” Hubert growls.

I know exactly what that tone means and I know that if I do not strike now, it will be too late for Ferdinand. 

Ignoring the pain shooting through me, I push myself up off the ground and throw myself at Hubert, sword gripped tightly in my shaking hands. In the instant before I reach him, I see a spell swelling in his hand - a ball of twisting dark magic thrashing and seething, growing into a tightly-wound core of energy. 

With a strangled cry, Hubert reaches out and slams his palm against Ferdinand’s chest, sending the magic burning straight into his body. And a second later, I bury Petra’s sword in his back.

It’s so much harder to kill someone with a sword than I imagined. I have to throw my whole body into it to get the blade to plunge all the way through him until it juts out through his chest. Hubert tries to react, but I wrench the blade free and swing it down, slashing it across his neck. Blood splatters across me as his body collapses and without meaning to, I drop the sword, stumbling back a step and tripping.

Ferdinand falls to his knees, then slumps to the ground. The magic has torn across his body and his breastplate is burned clean through so I can see the vicious scars and burns on his chest. 

“Dorothea!” Petra screams.

I fumble in panic, summoning my healing magic and lunging over to Ferdinand. I plant my palms on his chest and will every shred of energy in me to channel into this spell and save him before he is gone past the point of no return.

His skin hisses as my magic fights the damage of Hubert’s spell. It feels like an eternity before the dark magic recedes and the wounds begin to heal, leaving behind thick, blackened scars across Ferdinand’s skin. The same scars that cover Hubert’s hands.

Ferdinand’s eyes open and he gasps for breath. He tries to speak but can’t form any words. His eyes stray past me to stare at Hubert and pain twists his expression.

“Heal him,” he finally gasps. “Dorothea… please.”

“He killed you!” I say, my vision blurring with tears. “Ferdie, he- You can’t-”

“Please,” he begs.

I turn back to Hubert, feeling ill with the intensity of my conflicting emotions. A glow of healing magic comes to my hands of its own accord, but when I touch Hubert’s body, I can tell immediately that it’s too late. There’s no spell in the world that can bring him back.

“He’s dead,” I say numbly. “Ferdie, I’m so- I’m so sorry.”

“Petra,” he says and I nod. 

I force myself to my feet and race over to her. Blasting the rubble off of her legs carefully with a wind spell, I drag her away from it then heal her leg. She whimpers in pain as the bone snaps back into place and I pull her into my arms, crying against her neck.

The fighting has long since passed us by but I can’t bring myself to get up and follow. I can’t do anything but hold her and cry. And to my relief, she doesn’t move away yet. She just hugs me back and says, “Heal yourself, my love.”

I obey, casting a spell on my ankle and gasping as the bone knits back together. I repair my damaged ribs and once I am steady enough to stand, I get up and help Petra to her feet.

Together we walk over to Ferdinand, who is cradling Hubert’s dead body in his arms. His forehead is resting against Hubert’s and his long hair has fallen down to hide his face, but I know from the trembling in his shoulders and the short, gasping sound of his breathing that he is sobbing.

“Ferdinand,” Petra says gently. “We must be leaving here.”

“Go,” he replies. “Just go without me.”

She kneels down beside him and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Ferdinand.”

He looks up at her, his face streaked with ash and blood and tears. She brushes the hair out of his face and says, “We cannot win this war without using all of our courage. Dorothea has used all of hers to save you. You must use all of yours now.”

“To do what? The others are already in the palace. They will be attacking Edelgard as we speak. This war will be over within the hour. It is too late for us to stand beside them,” he says.

“You must use your courage for something much harder than fighting. You must be using it to live. I know all too well what your heart feels like when you think you have lost all that you love. I have watched people I love die too and thought that I did not have enough courage to be surviving it. I have learned that I do. And I know that you do too.”

Petra stands up and holds out her hand. Ferdinand stares at her for a moment, then takes it and lets her pull him up to his feet.

He glances over at me and I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes, scared that I will see the same hatred in them that I feel for myself. But when I finally look at him, all I see is grief.

  
  


_“I don’t know if I could really do it, though,” I admitted to Petra, my cheeks flushing slightly with shame. “I’ll try, but I don’t know… I’m not-”_

_“You are,” she said firmly._

_“I’m what?”_

_“Brave enough.”_

_“I was going to say ruthless enough.”_

_“Sometimes bravery is requiring ruthlessness. I promise I will be trying to do this myself for Ferdinand. But if I fail, I have faith that you will be able to for me, for him. Very soon this war will be ending and neither of us will have to be ruthless again. We will need our bravery for other things - kinder things. But today we will be needing it for terrible things if we are to be protecting those we love.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DoroPetra Week 2020 was a blast! Thanks to everyone who shared amazing art and stories. I loved seeing/reading all of it! I'm sad I didn't have time to write the last two days, but even with just doing the 5 it was still a fantastic week. Thanks for reading!


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